Developers' guide on Lima

Internal data structure

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Lima home directory (`${LIMA_HOME}`)

Defaults to ~/.lima.

Note that we intentionally avoid using ~/Library/Application Support/Lima on macOS.

We use ~/.lima so that we can have enough space for the length of the socket path, which must be less than 104 characters on macOS.

Unix: The directory can not be located on an NFS file system, it needs to be local.

_block-device-<disk>.lock files coordinate host block-device use across VZ instances. Raw/block aliases and partitions share the whole-disk lock. The files remain after the VM stops so another VM cannot lock a different inode for the same disk.

Virtual Machine Drivers

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

⚡ Requirement	Lima >= 2.0

Lima supports two types of drivers: internal and external. This architecture allows for extensibility and platform-specific implementations. Drivers are unware whether they are internal or external.

💡 See also: VM Types for user configuration of different virtualization backends.

Internal vs External Drivers

Internal Drivers are compiled directly into the limactl binary and are registered automatically at startup by passing the driver object into registry.Register() function and importing the package in the main limactl code using Go’s blank import _. For example:

Git tips

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Squashing Commits

To combine multiple commits into one (recommended unless your PR covers multiple topics):

# Adjust the number based on how many commits you want to squash
git rebase -i HEAD~3

In the interactive editor that appears:

Keep the first commit as pick
Change subsequent commits from pick to fixup (short formf). You may also choose squash (s), however, fixup is recommended to keep the commit message clean.
Save and close the editor to proceed

Example:

Developers' guide on Lima

Internal data structure

Lima home directory (${LIMA_HOME})

Virtual Machine Drivers

Internal vs External Drivers

Git tips

Squashing Commits

Lima home directory (`${LIMA_HOME}`)